Tuesday, 19th September, 5pm. Online
The Meeting will be held via Zoom. Please log in with your name and your university affiliation!
Zoom Link
Meeting-ID: 624 9589 4894
Kenncode: 372742
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Let’s act together and organize for fair employment at Austrian universities!
We would like to familiarize all non-German speaking colleagues with the current legal situation in Austria. While we cannot offer immediate legal support, we want to raise awareness among the scientific staff about the potential implications of the changed legislation. We will give information about the official institutions already in place to represent employees‘ interests at Austrian universities („Arbeiterkammer“, „Betriebsrat“). We will also introduce local university initiatives taking action against precarious employment. Last but not least, another goal of the meeting is to learn about the perspective of the international researcher community on the present situation in Austria and include them into the ongoing organizing process.
Please Note: This will be the second online meeting of this kind (the first one was in March this year). People who have attentend the last meeting are also welcome to join again. We will keep the presentations short and there will be time to discuss current developments and maybe also some individual cases.
Background Information
Fixed-term contracts have become the norm for the scientific staff at Austrian universities during the past decades. Until the latest amendment to the Universities Act in 2021 („UG Novelle 2021“) legal restrictions on the maximum duration of employment on subsequent fixed-term contracts could be circumvented by e.g. changing to another institution for a certain period of time. However, the reformed legislation now prohibits the employment of researchers and lecturers on non-permament contracts after a total duration of 8 years, regardless of interruptions. While this change was intended to push universities to offer more permanent contracts, the current practice forces qualified personnel more than ever to leave Austria or science all together.
NUWiss („Netzwerk Unterbau Wissenschaft“) is an independent network of university staff founded in 2022 out of a protest movement against the amendment of the University Act. Our aim is to promote organizing among university staff in order to push responsible stakeholders to not only take back the recent changes in the Austrian legislation, but to provide permanent contracts for a wider range of career paths than only the one leading to professorship.